Every year, millions of dollars in equipment are stolen from construction sites. Often, a single piece of equipment costs thousands of dollars. In addition to the loss of equipment, the time taken to replace even the most inexpensive equipment can be great. Construction delays can result in thousands, if not millions of dollars in construction contract damages, lost revenue, and other costs.
At the construction site, storage containers are usually provided to store this equipment and used to deter theft thereby saving significant money and time. However, many of these containers have no, or only simple locking devices that have little effect against theft. Additionally, these devices can be defeated externally with little effort, are overly burdensome, unnecessarily complicated and do little to actually make the containers more secure.
For example, an external padlock can be easily defeated with bolt cutters. To compound the problem, a typical situation of individual insider theft occurs by one employed at a construction site who, for example, may be specifically skilled in metalworking. Such an individual has little trouble cutting through external locking systems.
Previous attempts to address the problem of theft from storage compartments using an internally mounted security system have only produced weak solutions that are easily defeated and provide a false sense of security. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,933,382 and 5,760,703 disclose security locks for the door of a cargo truck. The locks operate using a single electrically controlled bolt which locks with a wheel track of the door assembly, or in a bracket carried by the door. There is no other lock or latch assembly utilized to prevent the door from being unlocked. Overcoming a single lock is relatively straight forward and may easily be done to open the door.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,866,963 discloses a security system for locking doors on a cargo truck. The system employs a latch assembly carried on the exterior of the doors, but the latch assembly has no lock. Again, only a single bolt, as discussed above, on the interior side of the door is utilized to lock and secure the door. Because there is no cooperation between the exterior latch assembly and the internally mounted security bolt, only a single bolt secures one of the two large storage compartment doors, which can be easily defeated.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,298,699 shows a typical electronic combination lock for a residential or commercial entrance door having a dial-shaped handle with a keypad incorporated therein. When the correct combination is selected a deadbolt may be unlocked. This type of lock is not meant for use in the type of security system needed to control access to a large cargo container as its small size makes it easily defeatable given the size of the container doors.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a security system mounted on the interior of a storage compartment which does not have externally mounted components that may be easily tampered with to gain access to the compartment interior.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a security system for a storage compartment which is cost efficient, easy to use, and requires multiple components to be manipulated in order to unlock the security system and open the door to the storage compartment.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a security system for a storage compartment that includes multiple internal securing points for locking the door, which are operated from a single internally mounted latch assembly controlled by a plurality of internally and externally mounted tamper-resistant controls that must be operated in a given order to successfully unlock the door.